The best way to obtain actual up to the minute weather information at our flying field is to call the phone number 916-366-3371 and listen carefully to the recorded message. This is the phone number to AWOS-3 at Mather Airport - the automated weather service design for full scale pilots. When you call, the machine plays the recorded information in the loop – if the machine picks up the phone in the middle of the loop, just wait till the message finishes and in few seconds it will start playing the recording again. The message usually is updated as often as every one minute.

Automated weather reads the following information (in that order):

reporting point (airport name),

observation time in Zulu time zone,

wind direction (from which the wind is blowing) and optional variable wind direction (in degrees of the compass),

Observation time: "automated weather observation one-eight-two-four Zulu weather" – that is 18:24 Zulu time. Looking at two clocks on the home page you will find, that it is 11:24 am local time (at summer time we are 7 hours behind Zulu time, in winter time we are 8 hours behind Zulu time ).

Wind direction: "wind two-niner-zero" – that is from compass direction 290 (word “niner” is used for digit 9). MASM runway is aligned at 6 degrees (compass direction) therefore the wind from 290 is blowing directly from the west - almost perpendicular to the runway (76 degrees to the runway center line).

Wind speed: "at four" - the wind speed is reported in knots, which is about 1.15 times more than in miles per hour, so the reported wind speed 4 knots is about 4.6 mph.

Visibility: "visibility missing" – at this time the sensor reporting visibility was not working, so it is "missing". Normally it will report the number in nautical miles or “more than 10” which is like “unlimited”.